Jane Roberts

Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author and poet, who claimed to be psychic and a spirit medium channeling a personality who called himself "Seth."

Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.

Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York.

Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old.

With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood.

Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible.

Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance.

Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.

The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house.

By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help.

When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her.

This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove.

Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both.

When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital.

Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore.

I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.

Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis.

By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland.

Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore).

For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, New York while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis.

Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family.

Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family.

For a time she was left between belief systems.

In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store.

It was her first job.

That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday.

After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship.

Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19.

It was a time of severe shock for her.

She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.

At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend.

Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home.

Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory.

Walt and Jane lived together for three years.

It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr.

The fourth time they met at another party and Jane "just looked at him and said, 'Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know.'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce.

Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954, at the home of his parents in Sayre, Pennsylvania.

Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels.

She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, Pennsylvania.

The couple moved to Elmira, New York, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery.